Sea Hunt (TV Series) Dark Evil (1961) User Reviews

Sea Hunt - Dark Evil

[Scarecrow-88 · 7/10 · 17 February 2015]

Mike must help rescue a potential love interest's father (Michael Whalen) from becoming a "human bomb" after he and his daughter (Margie Regan) ingest a fish they dived for in the water near Nassau. The tropical poisonous fish (nicknamed "dark evil") causes those who eat it to fall prey to delusions, homicidal urges, and suicidal desires. Although Mike will be able to get Lucille (Regan) to a doctor in time for treatment to cull her onset of psychosis (she attacks him while they are "sponge diving"), Lucille's wealthy philanthropist father, Oliver (Whalen) isn't so lucky. After demolishing his vacation home, he nearly stabs two beauties swimming nearby him, as he lunged from the ocean floor towards them, bumping his noggin on the bottom of their boat! Last but not least, Oliver finds a ramp with explosives, bops the guard on the head, and takes a canister of nitroglycerin! So Mike with help from the local police will need to pursue Oliver's whereabouts before he blows something or someone (or multiple someones) to smithereens. Besides a frustrating wobbly print of this episode of Sea Hunt, the reaction to the fish produces unintentional laughs as Oliver looks like an escaped lunatic. There's a dependence on using a fake screen in a studio to depict public on a beach in scenes with Margie and Michael (and one scene with Lloyd Bridges and Margie on his boat) that takes some authenticity away from the outdoors setting. Still the diving scenes always deliver, and the plot is plenty suspenseful enough…the idea that a fish causes those that eat it to freak out and go ballistic is certainly a disconcerting thought! The canister falling towards the ocean floor as Mike Nelson dives to retrieve it is quite a hair raiser even if the result is never in doubt. Lloyd's Mike even gets to flirt with Margie's Lucille so that bit of back and forth has its charm as well.